The next couple days are a special feature devoted to self-published authors.

At present, I rely on the gatekeepers of traditional publishing to vet my interviewees as I simply don’t have time to read every single author I feature—nor do I want to constrict WordMothers to my personal tastes: literary fiction, poetry, YA, children’s literature, French literature, and non-fiction such as philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and interior design.

However, before I specified that I wasn’t going to be featuring self-published authors just yet, I received a query from the lovely Niki Malherbe. When I declined, she thanked me for my consideration anyway. I was really touched because it actually takes a fair bit of my time to sift through inquiries. Some people submit little more than their name and an expression of interest, leaving it up to me to trawl through the internet to figure out who they are and what—if anything—they’ve actually published. I also try to be as respectful as possible when I do send out a rejection, so to have someone acknowledge that effort was really nice. The upshot of that exchange is I’ve been thinking about putting together this feature ever since!

It’ll be a short “week” as I’m at Sydney Writers’ Festival Thursday – Sunday. With 5 kids spread across 3 schools and however many extracurricular activities, I seem to have maxed out my facial recognition skills this year, so if you see me, please come over and say hello!

Cheers,

Nicole 🙂